At the end of last year my elderly British mother moved from Spain to live with her family here in Berlin. On the day that she arrived at the airport, she was pushed to the ground by an aggressive woman who was sharing the airport buggy with her. I was so excited to see my mum again for the first time in years that I never thought about reporting the incident to the police or checking what kind of travel insurance she had. It turns out that this was my first big mistake.
This accident swiftly led to a haematoma on her leg, a month-long stay in a hospital and three operations, including a skin graft. Her overall health has seriously deteriorated and she now requires regular daily care since she can no longer get up or walk on her own.
At such moments of great sadness and stress, you are always grateful to be so privileged to live in the EU since you know that full state medical care will be available and everything will be fine. You lament even more the Brexit decision because you fear that such reciprocal health care between EU-member states will soon be coming to an end. Well, that’s the theory …
In practice, however, the last eight months have been a constant, degrading and exhausting battle, first even to get the hospital and ambulance bills paid. The doctor who operated on my mother’s leg even had the audacity to ask my mother whether she had come to Germany purely in order to receive free medical treatment.
Then came the battle for medical insurance. My mother’s IHC card was not valid because she had become a resident of Germany and was longer just on a short holiday visit. This led to many hours spent making telephone calls, writing letters, filling in forms and arranging appointments with advice centres. Almost every piece of advice given was, in the end, wrong. It was as if either no one had ever been in this situation before or that the EU law meant absolutely nothing in practice.
I found myself wondering what would have happened to an 81-year-old German or Spanish woman, had all this happened to her in the UK. I cannot imagine for one moment that the NHS would have turned her away. Is the Brexit-driven UK, when the rubber hits the road, more faithful and efficient at carrying out EU directives than the more staunch, pro-EU nations?
Finally I learned from the UK International Health Care Team about the “Form S1” which gives UK nationals living permanently abroad the same medical care as the citizens who live in the host nation. We applied for the form and when it arrived in Berlin, duly signed and stamped, we assumed our struggles were over.
However, just when we thought were safe, we discovered that there are two levels of health care for pensioners in Germany, one that covers basic health care such as a visit to the doctor, but another that provides the person with care if they require assistance with essential daily tasks or going to the toilet and personal hygiene.
The Form S1, it was argued in Germany, covers the former, but not the latter, leaving my mother in a terrible situation. In other words, the Form S1 does not in practice entitle EU-citizens the same medical care as the citizens who live in the host nation. “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
After four months of fighting this battle and watching my mother’s physical and psychological state deteriorate, I really was so full of despair and was about to give up. Not even the British Embassy could help us. I started to plan to fly her back to England to put her in a home and leave her there with no regular contact with her son or four grandchildren. A sad and lonely departure from life.
Then, one day I was told that I should make a formal complaint about the health insurance company’s refusal to provide my mother with the full level of health care. I did so, invoking all kinds on EU-law. Months later this led to the requirement of one last form from the UK which only the health insurance company could request. When this form arrived in Germany, within a few weeks the original refusal was rescinded and the decision made to provide my mother with the full level of health care that a German citizen would receive. “All animals are equal, provided they know exactly which forms to fill in.”
As much as I am of course delighted about this decision, the enormous frustration has left its scars. This whole endurance test, which left my mother at home alone in inhumane conditions, which caused my children no longer to feel comfortable at home with their friends and which caused me hours of desperation, could have been avoided if only one person had been able to tell me the procedure from the outset. It all boiled down to just two short documents.
So, if you or someone you know is struggling with the same issue either in Germany or another EU-country, feel free to drop me an e-mail and I can with pleasure walk you through the process in a few, simple steps.
“After the Berlin Wall came down I visited that city and I will never forget it. The abandoned checkpoints. The sense of excitement about the future. The knowledge that a great continent was coming together. Healing those wounds of our history is the central story of the European Union.” David Cameron.
